Today, we bring you an article about a long-lost poetry collection that sheds light on Key West’s Cuban American history.

Long Lost Collection of Poetry Sheds Light on Cuban American History of Key West

When Joy Castro’s father passed away, she found a paperback book amongst his things. The book was a collection of poetry written by her grandfather. The poems were rather mushy and flowery in their language, and she thought little of them until over a decade later when she realised just how significant her discovery was.

Lagrimas y Flores, written by Feliciano Castro, holds many secrets to the rich cultural and literary archive of the early 20th-century Cuban community of Florida and to the history of the poet’s family.

Castro was a Spanish-Cuban printer, poet, editor and cigar factory lector who made a name for himself in Key West. He was responsible for establishing one of the most prominent Spanish-language presses and was also a representative between Monroe County and Spain.

An assistant professor, Rhi Johnson, from Indiana University, who has teamed up with Joy Castro said,

“The community that this book comes out of is one of the richest and most understudied in not only U.S. Latinx or Latine studies, but also within the sort of broader framework of hemispheric or Latin American literature,”

Together, they are working on bringing the first English translation of the collection to the world. They hope that it will offer a picture of the Cuban American community in Key West, something that is largely unknown to many people.

The collection was first published in 1918 and is set to be released in its newly translated format in October under the title Tears and Flowers: A Poet of Migration in Old Key West. It is being planned as a bilingual facing page edition. The original Spanish text will appear on the left-hand page, with the translation in English on the right.

The project has been in hand since 2019 when Joy Castro met Johnson at a university summer institute looking at the works of Jose Marti, Cuban independence and the immigrant communities of Florida. When Johnson saw the collection of Castro poetry, he immediately recognised its importance in a sociopolitical context. Whilst the area in question had a rich cultural history at the time, there are not the significant and lasting archives that it would be hoped had been left, so this small book of poetry offers some real insights.

The collection has influences from both Modernismo and Romanticism, the former being of huge significance with its roots coming from Latin America. It is divided into two parts, Lagrimas, meaning tears which looks at patriotism and political strife and flores, flowers, which is dedicated to women in the area, comfort and beauty.